The growing energy prices due to the rarefaction of the fossil fuels and the consideration of the environmental impacts makes inevitable the involvement of industrials to promote energy efficiency policy and emissions reductions. We notice that the Non-energy intensive industry (NEI), by opposition to the energy intensive industry (EI), is expected to play an important role because of their economic and energy importance and its relatively high growth rate. It becomes then a priority target especially since it has been neglected in energy analysis despite the continuing policy interest in energy efficiency and the many reports and book written on the topic. How can NEI contribute effectively to the reduction of the energy consumptions and the CO2 emissions? Which technologies and/or policies should be…

The purpose of the thesis is the study of industrial dynamics, in particular cognitive biases that lead to the lock-in of these dynamics. If innovation processes beyond the scope of the firm have been the subject of various studies, little has been done on the study of industrial dynamics from the perspective of cognitive lock in design activities. To explore this question, the thesis focuses on the study of a new phenomenology, orphan innovation, which is defined as orphan innovation as an innovation highly expected by society, but one which no actor or consortium of actors can manage to process with their current innovation capabilities, although all of the institutional conditions to foster it are gathered. The aim of the thesis is to answer three questions: How to model industrial dynamics and to identify causal factors of orphan innovation? How to build a tool to diagnose cognitive biases and orphan innovation in empirical situations? What are the organizational levers to overcome orphan innovation situations?The thesis then is based on three main results:1) a model of collective cognitive fixation, underlying the impact of imaginaries and their interactions among a collective action.2) a methodology to identify collective fixation and therefore to diagnose orphan innovation.3) a model of action for a new actor, called the architect of the unknown, in charge of stimulating innovative design capacities of the actors among the industry.

A loss of industrial competitiveness is a major concern for energy and environmental policy design. This thesis studies the impacts of energy prices and environmental regulation asymmetries among countries on the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in Europe and in the World. First, main factors of competitiveness in two energy-intensive industries, steel and paper sectors, are identified with econometric methods. The role of energy is then quantified and weighted relatively to these other factors. In particular, the evolution of exports and production for a national industry, as well as changes in production capacities of a factory, are analysed. Secondly, high energy prices, or a new environmental regulation, do not impact only energy-intensive industries but also downstream manufacturing sectors. The scale of the research is therefore extended to the whole manufacturing industry on a global scope. The objective is to grasp energy interdependencies between industrial sectors all along the production chain, including national differences in energy use. The study is based on a matrix calculation method using Input-Output tables. Energy dependence of national industries is not only a domestic issue, but also an international one.

What does it means to love a "TV series" nowadays? Or, to use a more pragmatic formulation, what do television series make their viewers do? To answer these questions, this thesis invites the reader to move beyond the paradigm of reception – on which the majority of studies in the field build upon - and explore the remits and contours of the practice of series. The aim is to study the practical activities undertaken by amateurs, how their attachments to the series are built, the ingredients of this attachment, and the material, technical and relational means of this attachment. This work shows that spectators' practices do not stop at the moment of viewing, when the individual is in front of his post, but extends to all activities, times and spaces through which an individual connects to a series. Drawing upon forty in-depth interviews and an examination of the ways in which series are socio-technically mediated, the thesis proposes to follow amateurs in their daily practices, from the viewing and storage of series, to their conversational exchanges, as well as through the procedures of information and discovery, procurement and sharing of content. All these activities are not only "receptive". As the thesis shows, they are at once reflexive, embodied, instrumented and collective, and they reveal the diversity of attachments of the "seriephiles" to these singular objects.

In the last decade, the photovoltaic market was multiplied by 10, module price was reduced by 60%, and China increased its share in cell and module production from almost nothing to more than half. The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the mechanisms driving these transformations. We analyse how China managed to acquire the photovoltaic technology, relying on interviews with actors of the Chinese photovoltaic industry, and data gathered on patents related to the photovoltaic technology. We show that intellectual property rights did not play a significant role, Chinese firms getting access to the technology by buying manufacturing equipment from industrialised countries, and from labour mobility. The cost decrease is analysed with experience curves models, allowing us to forecast a further cost decrease of two thirds by 2020, provided that the market follows the high predicted expansion. It gives some insight regarding when photovoltaic technology will become competitive. An important attention is dedicated to feed-in tariffs which largely participated in driving the demand so far. Their influence on the photovoltaic market, and their ability to adapt to module price volatility to avoid too attractive profits, is analysed using weekly data. A theoretical model analysing the influence of firms' strategies on the incentive effect of feed-in tariffs allows us to give further recommendations concerning an optimal feed-in tariff scheme.

The purpose of the thesis is to study the implementation of radical innovation capabilities within established firms. The work is based on the longitudinal in-depth study of the innovative design processes of an aircraft manufacturer: Turbomeca. While previous research works have recognized that preparing for the future requires distinctive capabilities for radical innovation, the processes of integration of these capabilities still lacks an empirically grounded understanding. Building on recent research works on the management of innovative design processes, our study aims at modeling the innovative design activities that have to be organized to integrate radical innovation capabilities within established firms. Three research questions are investigated: how can radical innovation situations be characterized? How organizational transitions can be managed to integrate radical innovation capabilities? What are the organizational settings that may sustain these radical innovation capabilities over time? Drawing on an analytical framework to study radical innovation capabilities that relates Design (D), Incubation (I) and Mutation (M) of the ecosystem, three main results are presented:1/ the genealogy of Turbomeca design capabilities;2/ the concept of design organizational transition to…

Agriculture is facing an environmental crisis that makes it necessary to take into account the “ecosystem” functioning. But this concept of ecology is difficult to handle in the agricultural sector. Fields of literature on the "commons" and the "ecosystem services", which deal with the management of ecosystems, have been extensively developed and relayed by public policy. The thesis shows that they often freeze the conflict between agricultural objectives and environmental concerns without allowing the exploration of new farming systems.Our thesis in management science highlights the fact that a new challenge for scientific research is to learn to manage environmental regulations within agro-ecosystems in order to make agriculture sustainable. It aims to define a design approach of agro-ecosystems: can innovative design be applied to them? What are the methods to design agro-ecosystems? And what are the appropriate modes of governance?The historical analysis of scientific reasoning in agronomy and ecology highlights the reasons why the design of agro-ecosystems remains so difficult, despite finer knowledge on environmental regulations. The thesis models a particular class of objects, the…

8.
Berthélemy, Michel.
L'économie de l'énergie nucléaire : quatre essais sur le rôle de l'innovation et de l'organisation industrielle : The economics of nuclear power : four essays on the role of innovation and industrial organization.

This thesis studies the role of innovation and industrial structures in the nuclear power sector. The analysis of innovation is based on the use of patent data as a measure of innovation effort. On the one hand, we study the determinants of innovation and, on the other hand, its impact on operating and safety performance of existing nuclear reactors and on construction costs. We show that nuclear safety regulation can induce innovation and improve safety performance, but at the same time contributes to increases in construction costs. The analysis of the role of industrial structures allows us to study the impact of learning by doing opportunities both for construction and operation of reactors, as well as the effect of electricity market liberalization on operating performance. In particular, we show that the divestiture of electricity production and distribution activities induces a substantial improvement in the availability of nuclear reactors.

Experiments on sustainable city or neighborhood accompanied by the search for new modes of design, governance, management and plan-ning of the city. The thesis proposes to study the emergence of an innovation based on so-called 'sustainable' from the tools and instruments which will equip participants to manage these new situations. Four types of instrumentation are considered in the thesis: legal (contracts between the parties); Economic and Financial (financial engineering development projects / ACG), governance and management (repositories, project management and process) design and evaluation performance of the district or area con-sidered (these tools and templates that can be quantitative and qualitative). This systematic analysis has not yet been carried out in the literature. It is therefore a theoretical issue. It is also an empirical issue…

Can a company organize development with controlled risk while promising markets and eligible technologies are yet unknown? These situations cannot be handled with classical techno push or market pull strategies; and "trial and learning" processes are too unpredictable and too costly while facing with unknowns in high-tech. However, in some industries such as semiconductors, one has to organize exploration while controlling costs and risks in double unknown. In this situation the success of technological development in double unknown is correlated with the existence of generic technologies. Though, it remains unclear how to account for the design of generic technologies. This thesis models the design of generic technologies and investigates the associated models of collective action.This work is based on four main results:1) an original model of risk management that consists of identifying “common unknown” for several potential applications; 2) the modeling and simulation defining the techno-economic conditions in which the introduced “common unknown” strategy is relevant; 3) The characterization of the notion of generic technological concepts and the process of genericity design built upon the most recent design theory formalisms ; 4) a new managerial figure, the «cross-application manager », essential for the success of generic technologies design.

Climate change belongs to a new category of environmental issues, for which we don't know how to design solutions. Indeed, it is possible to treat traditional pollutions using technical solutions that are already known. To the contrary, mitigating climate change involves a profound revision of the organizational models that support our modern societies. The institutional device to guide this low carbon transition still needs to be designed. Traditionally, the question of institutional innovation is addressed in a field of organization theories named “neo-institutional theory”. Nevertheless, research in this field has focused on the diffusion of institutional innovation, but not on the design of institutional innovation itself. In a global context of crisis of our societal models, there is an emergency for this gap to be explored. In the context of institutional theory, this work analyzes the mechanisms of “institutional design” through the case of carbon markets. We build two notions that help to better understand the mechanisms at play: the notion of experimental platforms and the notion of institutional design work. Eventually, we build on previous work in management sciences on the concept of bricolage to identify the efficiency conditions of this design activity.

How does work the fabric of management consulting's value? Despite the dynamism of the market, consultants' practice remains poorly known and often criticized. One questions the efficacy of their methods and the general value added of their recommendations. The intellectual tools of the pragmatist sociology allow us to shed a new light on these matters, getting around the classic opposition between a functionalist (rational-technical) and a critical (psycho-social) approach to the practice. The key argument of the dissertation is that management consulting should be understood as a performance geared toward a practical efficacy. Value emerges from the service as it is being performed: it sanctions the felicity of a socio-technical attachment between consultants and their client-system. The dissertation is grounded on a complete involvement in a large French consulting firm, for about three years. It is an ethnographic account of the practices of consultants during their assignments within various large organizations. It decrypts specifically five valuation processes that intensify the density and the impact of the service in client-systems: (1) the singularization of the service, (2) the rise in competence of consultants,(3) the production of their authority, (4) the graphical presentation of the diagnosis and (5) the signaling of activity.…

Many studies show that industrial design is key to triggering, fostering andsustaining innovation. However, the unique capacities of creation and innovationof industrial designers make it challenging for them to thrive within industrialenvironments.The challenge for companies is to create the optimal work environment forthose professionals, while ensuring their work can be integrated smoothly intothe existing industrial design processes. We assume this dilemma is partiallystemming from the intensive use of sequential design models in the industry.Design tools were developed on the assumption that creative front end andproduct development should be separated.We introduce here a new model, aiming at depicting accurately the…

Firms reduce their environmental impacts thanks to a series of environmental assessment tools such as LCA and Bilan Carbone (the latter being a specific form of carbon footprint assessment tool). which are supposed to act as decision support tools. However, even if these tools are widely spread among companies, the question of their performativity, or the way they effectively change managerial practice, remains. In other words several of these assessment tools do not become ipso facto management instruments. Research on environmental sciences link the difficulties of assessment tools appropriation to the tools' inherent properties (ergonomics, scientific models' robustness) and are subject to a to constant revision work. In this thesis, we explore the organisational and cognitive dimensions of this appropriation; in particular the emergence of epistemic and practice communities structured around the instruments, which constitute a receptive environment for their deployment.Based on a field work in an environmental consultancy agency, this thesis examines for six empirical case studies the process and the conditions under which the instruments trigger a sustained collective action. Beyond the basic instrument level, we study the features that are implemented in the course of…

He current study explores the curiously not much studied in management problem of innovation of contemporary Web-based applications. Starting from the distinction between user (U) and manufacturer/entrepreneur (E) innovation and using a phenomenon-based research approach, it identifies a third actor, the developer (D), whose action is found to lie in-between the two. Three actor figures are proposed for his description: user-developer (UD), user-developer-entrepreneur (UDE) and developer- entrepreneur (DE).This interpretative framework (U, D, E) is tested in the second part on the cases of three industries, where it enables a tracing of their history, from their birth to their maturity: radio industry, PC industry and enterprise computer industry. The important role of D actor is identified in all three…

Strategic spatial planning in France is currently given a rising importance for environmental and climate issues. But is this tool really able to reduce urban sprawl and to produce a efficient framework for reducing transport emissions? And what can be the potential contributions to planning of economic analysis and prospective modelling? To answer this, we developed our study on the contribution of economic tools to planning into the global political and administrative reforms of France. We then produced a critical analysis of current planning practices and recent evolutions, and try to define the conditions for a better integration of economic analysis into planning processes and methods. For our case study (Grenoble urban area) we built and used economic tools able to inform local climate policies in the framework of urban planning. It is the first implementation of the land -use transport interaction model TRANUS in France, which was linked to an original economic methodology in order to produce marginal abatment cost curves useful at the urban level. This model and the methodology can take into account the systemic nature of cities and then help to define better…

Energy investments are a requirement to mitigate climate change, but also a challenge for adaptation. The first part of this PhD dissertation focuses on improving the energy efficiency of domestic appliances. Chapter 1 analyses if consumers take into account energy costs when they purchase refrigerators with UK market data. Chapter 2 presents the EU Energy Label, its expected effects on energy efficiency and the key factors of success of such a large scale information-based policy. The second part of this PhD dissertation broadens the scope of analysis to the impacts of climate change on energy investment behaviour. Chapter 3 reviews the climate sensitiveness of the electricity sector and provides elements of discussion on how investments decisions could better take into account climate change in the future. Chapter 4 provides a longitudinal analysis of the evolution of US housing (1985-2011) and its sensitivity to climate, with the objective of forecasting the long-run impact of climate change on both residential gas and electricity consumptions.

In 2010, the president of the Renault-Nissan announces $ 4 billion in a program to develop electric vehicle and its battery. At that time, the automotive industry is facing a major economic crisis. The success of this engagement is crucial. The electric vehicle is the subject of an innovative design that destabilizes business practices. New protocols should be defined to validate the performance of that product. Given the elimination of emissions during operation, new questions emerge and require a comprehensive assessment of the environmental performance of these vehicles. Therefore, the company must set up a transparent dialogue and manage contested.This work is based in an industrial world, the situation is suitable for intervention. The method of abduction - deduction - induction is used. Collective action is not obvious and needs to be managed. Co-LCA model is designed to facilitate collaboration and building a set of key rules to carry out the study. These rules are still questionable. However, this approach can give more legitimacy to the study. This experience has strengthened the company's practices; it allows many discussions with stakeholders in a structured framework. This process is a platform for knowledge sharing, open discussion and dissemination of information. Finally, we open the way for the LCA tool becomes an instrument for environmental management at the service…

As “cluster” became a new buzzword, governments around the world increasingly implement cluster policies. However, a relevance gap is growing between cluster research and practice. Scholars build theories about the roles of clusters as powerful entities fostering innovation and competitiveness. Meanwhile, governments and policy-driven cluster organizations struggle to manage these highly entangled objects. This thesis addresses such a relevance gap. A systematic literature review (SLR) is conducted on cluster policy research, which demonstrates that governments and policy-driven cluster managers constantly face a multitude of organizational dilemmas, i.e. a set of decisions and choices for which there is no “one best choice”, in matters such as how to implement cluster policy (political dilemmas), how to manage policy-driven cluster members (managerial dilemmas) and how to adapt the policy-driven cluster to the local reality (structural dilemmas). Answering these dilemmas is constitutive of the management of policy-driven clusters, but it generates side-effect…

The High Authority for Transmission of Creative Works and Copyright Protection on the Internet (HADOPI) was adopted in 2009 with the mission to discipline acts of intellectual property infringement on the internet. The main purpose of this thesis is to produce an empirical account of the creation of this new law (an instrument of public action as an experience of internet governance and internauts). While it is a somewhat minor public issue, illegal downloading creates a myriad of issues across the framework of public action, historically recognised as literary and artistic property rights. The political effects of the digital age, deterritorialised consequences of globalisation, liberalism and technology necessitate a rethinking of the relationship between sovereignty and discipline. The gridlock between DRM; supranational norms; the hijacking of content by users; the collective power of rights holders; the unalterable nature of intellectual property and the militants for free access to culture; the public authorities had to invent and innovate an instrument of public action. The goal of which is to extend an added value of the French nation state: the defense of the cultural exception. Are internauts governable? In…

When organisational context is evolving, what are the consequences for the role of managers ? Litterature about managerial work considered for a long time that the managerial role was single and steady whatever was its organisational background. Nevertheless, researches in organizational design point that a deep development of organizational configuration impact the company's hierarchy…

This thesis studies the role of construction costs and safety regulation on nuclear power competitiveness. The analysis of the construction costs is based on the use of the actual data coming from the american and french nuclear fleet. In particular, we study different channels from which cost reductions might arise. We show that standardization is a key criterion for the economic competitiveness of nuclear power, first because the positive learning effects are conditional to the technology, this means that cost reductions will arise only if the same type of reactor is built several times, but also because it allows to reduce the cost indirectly through shorter construction lead-times. In the analysis of the role of safety regulation, we first asses the effect of the latest major nuclear accident (i.e Fukushima Dai-ichi) in the probability of occurrence of such an event and then the effects of the uncertainty regarding how safety care reduce the probability of a nuclear accident in setting safety standards under moral hazard and limited liability. We find that the standard will be stricter when the regulator is optimistic in the safety care effectiveness to reduce the risk of an accident, but simultaneously this policy might induce no compliance of the most inefficient operators.

This thesis rises in a context where the automobile supremacy is questioned. It aims at analysing behavioural changes related to the deployment of solutions to pool car, in order to foresee evolution of its modes of use, intensity of use, as well as that of motorization. First, we identify new car mobility services as main vectors of changes in behaviours, we also measure the potential development of carpooling (important), carsharing and short-term car rental (limited), and we end up by showing that these services can achieve energy savings if used as substitute to individual equipment. In a second step, we focus on the analysis of mobility patterns from which we establish a behaviour classification highlighting their main drivers. From these, the estimation of a modal choice model shows that shifts from personal car toward public transport or shared car are likely to 2020, in the case of a decrease in households' motorization level. Thus, we finally analyse the evolution of households' motorization and emphasis a breaking point in the positive generational trends observed in the past, that will know a stagnation if not an inversion to 2020. As a consequence, the evolution of the French car market will tend to be more driven by sales to fleet and business than sales to private.

With the spread of new technologies and the advent of economic and social changes, the volume of parcels has grown in France. Parcel deliveries in cities have similarly experienced an important increase. Deliveries have become more and more complex because of changing client patterns, urban constraints and cities' concerns for sustainability. The growing complexity of the ‘last mile' delivery poses economic, organizational, environmental and political challenges to parcel providers. Putting the spatial organization of cities back at the heart of the creation of new logistics organizations and integrating spatial studies to urban logistics techniques and tools, in particular in modelling, can be means of innovation. Until now spatial studies have been largely under-used in UF. This study will provide an in-depth analysis of the relationships between urban spatial organization, urban form and UF. Based on those results, the thesis provides the first elements of a spatial urban freight modelling approach. The modelling approach will enable the creation of a decision support tool able to identify homogeneous urban zones based on urban form, economic and political characteristics in order to offer the most suitable delivery solution to each zone of a city.

Internet intermediaries' liability is a rising issue in a more and more complex digital environment. Intermediaries provide online services. They create or facilitate transactions between third parties (hosting, online shops, ISPs...). At the end of the 1990s, a limited liability has been established for these actors with the aim of developing intermediaries and Internet through cross externalities. However, the arrivals of new uses and functions have created negative externalities for some economic agents. The new increase of case law sometimes contradictory, in particular for intellectual property rights, questions this exemption. It creates legal risk for Internet intermediaries. Thus, they have to take into account this new situation in their business models. This thesis studies specific behaviors that Internet intermediaries' liability creates with the example of intellectual property rights. First we describe the historic evolution of this liability. Then we develop a simple theoretical model in order to explore the influence of legal risk when there is competition between an intermediary and a copyright holder. Finally, the model is extended to take into account avoidance activities of Internet intermediaries.

In recent years, several states have introduced new corporate forms into their commercial law, which requires the commitment of shareholders towards a “mission”. By stipulating their purposes in their documents, these companies appear as a paradox for literature on corporate governance: would such a commitment not hamper strategic flexibility and undermine the monitoring of management? Is it not likely to deter shareholders' investments? The aim of this thesis is to explain the emergence of "mission-driven companies", to understand their motivations, but also to characterize the alternative model of governance they draw and the significance of this model in management science.First, the analysis of the process of emergence and design of these mission-driven forms in the United States enables us to enrich the classical model of the corporate contract, by showing that such a contract can have restrictive effects on the collective purposes if it only contains a commitment on invested resources, or provisions on the distribution of decision rights or value created to stakeholders.The thesis proposes, in a second step, a model of the "mission": by specifying…

In a globalized world, unilateral environmental policies may fail to correct market failures from a global point of view. In this dissertation, I examine some mechanisms through which environmental regulations could lead to inefficient outcomes under free trade. I also investigate how particular environmental policies such as recycling policies can help to address other concerns at the country level. In the first chapter of…

This thesis approaches valuation as an on-going, constructive and contested process. She addresses this theoretical issue through the study of a very complex object of valuation: nuclear waste in the context of the United States. As an ontologically ambivalent object, nuclear waste can be valued or devalued from many angles, which provides an intriguing and exciting test bed to unfold a sociology of valuation. The thesis examines a multitude of sites where the question of the formulation of nuclear values is being raised. These sites are, for example, the design and vicissitudes of the budgetary process conceived to finance the North American nuclear waste program, the trials set up in order to distribute the financial responsibility of a material expected to remain hazardous during the next million years, the efforts of a group of actors to attach the future of their community to the future of nuclear waste, or the uses of an economic convention to estimate the economic value of spent nuclear fuel. This thesis shows that processes of valuation are never limited to the object that is subjected to valuation and proposes the notion of revaluation, first, to articulate the intertwined relationship…

“Low cost” is nowadays a very mobilized concept in innovation and new product development both in the general press and in the scientific literature. In management sciences, theconcept is widely mobilized in strategy, marketing as well as new product development. However, there seems to be a lack of a design model for such an approach, making difficult for managers to implement the development of low cost offers. Our work shows that existent low cost products had followed different design rules that could be modelled. We propose a low cost design model that distinguishes two approaches: low cost adaptation and smart low cost design. In low cost adaptation approach, the product is…